Editorial: Quincy wrong to use schools as zoning weapon

Friday

Mar 27, 2009 at 12:01 AMMar 27, 2009 at 2:20 PM

It’s one think to create zoning laws to protect school children from lawbreakers. But municipalities cross the line when they use schools as a zoning weapon to fight legitimate businesses because someone doesn’t like the look of their customers.

It’s one thing to create zoning laws to protect schoolchildren from lawbreakers.

But municipalities cross the line when they use schools as a zoning weapon to fight legitimate businesses because someone doesn’t like the look of their customers.

A college-educated artist attempting to open a tattoo studio in Quincy is getting a taste of the latter, and it’s wrong.

Nancy Mathieu, of Rockland, hopes next month to open her business on West Squantum Street.

But the city council has an ordinance prohibiting such businesses within 1,000 feet of a school. Mathieu’s is near Montclair Elementary School.

What gives Mathieu some legal footing is that the ordinance was passed one day after she received a building permit for her shop and 10 days after she signed a lease.

She filed suit in Norfolk Superior Court and won. But she isn’t celebrating for fear the city will appeal.

In his ruling, Superior Court Judge John P. Connor determined Mathieu’s First Amendment rights were at stake, so the city needed to prove that the new ordinance would substantially improve the government’s ability to protect children.

“The defendants enacted the amendment based on mere speculation that a body art establishment’s operation could somehow harm children attending a nearby school,” he said.

City Councilor Kevin Coughlin said he proposed the tattoo ordinance after receiving complaints from residents about unsavory characters loitering in front of existing tattoo parlors.

But passing laws based on the way people look or the speculation that because they patronize certain businesses they are likely commit a crime is a slippery slope. This issue may come up again soon.

One of the first complaints from those opposed to a proposal that would bring a Boston burlesque troupe to Quincy was that it would be near a Catholic school.

We do need to protect children from many threats to health and safety.

It makes sense to increase penalties for drug dealing around schools. It makes sense not to allow smoking around schools. And it makes sense to lower speed limits around schools.

Even zoning that keeps fast food restaurants away from schools might be justified.

(Recent studies have found obesity among children increases when there were fast food restaurants within a block of their schools.)

But it gets shaky when you try to use school-based zoning to penalize people based on notions of what they might do.

That’s why some educators and city officials are justifiably uncomfortable with a recent proposal to restrict sex offenders from living within 1,500 feet of schools.

“This is not a benign ordinance,” said Councilor Joseph Finn. “It is contrary to good public safety policy to create sex offender ghettos.”

It's also bad policy to attempt to create a giant cocoon around our children.

And while every parent and guardian should be highly sensitive to the slightest hint of danger, legislating such protective intuition through school-based zoning creates a false sense of security and is unfair.